Silent Hill: The Short Message

Silent Hill: The Short Message is a 2024 psychological horror game co-developed by Konami Digital Entertainment and HexaDrive and published by Konami. The game was announced and released for free for the PlayStation 5 on 31 January 2024.

The plot follows a teenage girl named Anita after she receives bizarre text messages from her deceased friend Maya, who committed suicide, and must look for things that serve as clues in an abandoned apartment complex in Germany, while occasionally evading a monster covered in cherry blossom petals (later officially revealed as "Sakura Head" following a poll) that pursues her at certain moments and cannot be attacked. The game is played from a first-person perspective with no combat involved. Bullying, the impacts of social media, and suicide are the primary themes of the game.

Silent Hill: The Short Message received mixed reviews; while some critics praised its visuals, atmosphere, themes and the game's free price tag, others criticized its gameplay, dialogue and chasing sequences.

Plot
Silent Hill: The Short Message is set in the fictional economically depressed town of Kettenstadt, Germany, rather than the eponymous town of Silent Hill. The game takes place within an abandoned apartment complex called the "Villa", a popular graffiti hot spot and infamous suicide spot among teenage girls.

A young woman named Anita receives a message from her friend and Internet-famous graffiti artist Maya, known online as C.B. (Cherry Blossoms), to meet in the Villa, and upon entering, she follows a trail of Maya's artworks throughout the building. During her search, she has flashbacks regarding the online harassment she experienced while trying to be as popular online as Maya. Over the course of the game, she is chased by a monster which is covered by blooming cherry blossoms. Despite attempting to contact Maya over text, she receives no response.

She receives a call from her friend Amelie, who reminds Anita that Maya is already dead, having jumped off the roof of the Villa some time ago. Anita is shocked she would forget something so important and wonders who is texting her using Maya's name. She winds up on the roof and discovers Maya's final art piece. Jealous of the number of followers Maya has, Anita decides to leap off the roof in an attempt to emulate her.

However, instead of dying, she awakens back inside the Villa where she started. Maya messages Anita, telling her that neither of them can leave until Anita finds "it". Anita is forced to explore the Villa again, which is in a more dilapidated state with Maya's artworks vandalized. For a period, she relives memories of Maya being bullied at school, before returning at the Villa. Anita finds an artwork of Maya's she had never seen before, one depicting Amelie. Anita recalls how Maya was always much closer to Amelie than her, and that she felt ignored by Maya. Continuing on, Anita is in her school library where she learns about how Kettenstadt was supposedly cursed by a Japanese witch after her death.

Anita finds a letter written by Maya begging Amelie for help, and recalls that she purposely withheld the letter from Amelie due to her jealousy over Maya's close friendship with her, which she believes led to Maya's suicide. Her journey leads her back to the roof, where she admits her guilt regarding Maya's death to Amelie over the phone, before jumping off the roof a second time.

Anita awakens back in the Villa. Exploring the building once again, Anita is in her old family home, and recalls how her mother both neglected and abused her and her younger brother by locking them in the closet. This culminated in Anita's brother dying while locked up, and her mother attempting to hide his body in the refrigerator before Anita escaped and reported her to the police. She discovers that Maya was planning to make an artwork depicting her as well, meaning Maya had not been ignoring her. The monster chases Anita for a final time again before she finds herself back on the roof and again apologizes to Amelie for not realizing how much both she and Maya valued their friendship with her. Anita considers jumping off the roof, but stops herself at the last second which dispels the fog surrounding the Villa, returning Anita to reality.

Sometime later, a social media post by Amelie indicates that both she and Anita have left Kettenstadt for college to start new lives.

Development
Motoi Okamoto, producer for the Silent Hill series, stated the game's main themes are suicide, cyberbullying, social media, and mental health. Creature designer and Silent Hill veteran Masahiro Ito continued, "I felt that, definitely, this was something that would really resonate with a younger generation, given that so many of them are active on social media."

Leaks
In 2022, screenshots from a playable teaser leaked under the title Sakura. Silent Hill: The Short Message was rated in South Korea in September 2022 and in December 2022, The Short Message was rated in Taiwan. In October 2022, Konami began hiring for upcoming Silent Hill projects, including an unannounced in-house game.

Reception
Silent Hill: The Short Message received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic, with 25% of critics recommending the game on aggregator OpenCritic.

Christopher Teuton from Screen Rant wrote in his review: "For a free game that shows the first glimpse of what Konami is truly going to do with the franchise, Silent Hill: The Short Message is absolutely worth experiencing". "It's a far better start than it could have been, and it is undeniably the best new Silent Hill media since 2014, although the game's effectiveness in handling these topics will vary depending on a person's own relationship with them."

Writing for IGN, Koji Fukuyama and Daniel Robson commended the game's "effective use of themes... to create a feeling of genuine dread", describing the game as a modern and impactful iteration of the Silent Hill franchise. In contrast, Mark Delaney of GameSpot described the game as a "bad Silent Hill caricature", critiquing its "trial-and-error" chase sequences and "on-the-nose" plot and dialogue. Willa Rowe of Kotaku found the game to be "unnecessarily graphic" and its themes "shallow and heavy-handed", observing the game's ending twist to be predictable. In a review for Polygon, Carli Velocci compared many aspects of the game to previous Silent Hill titles such as P.T. and Silent Hill: Downpour, and found the references to the series at large "extremely unsubtle", while describing the game's presentation of its suicide themes as "borderline tacky", observing that the writing "doesn't give Anita much more definition beyond her mental illness." Still, she ultimately concluded that the game has its merits, such as "some unique imagery that makes me feel optimistic about the series' future".

By 12 February, the game reached 2 million downloads on the PlayStation Store.